Catching up

thanksgiving07

Here are the photos from Thanksgiving and my weekend in Chicago. I had a great time at the Staff Band reunion. The pictures will show there were only 3 women in the alumni band, all horn players and good friends. It was fun to be with Sherry and Jenny and my other 'old' friends. You'll also see that I got to put the angel on the top of Jordans' tree. Rachel picked me to do it this year, since I've been away so long!

The next week was extremely busy with Christmas activities. Monday - Wednesday I spent the evenings helping with Toy Lift. For those who don't know, it's a gift program for prisoners and their children. The toys are wrapped, packaged and shipped all over the country for children of inmates. It's a huge program and uses hundreds of volunteers. Fortunately, it was also very organized and I just helped out where I could. I also went to the St. Charles county Tree of Lights kick-off. Again, we have a great team who put these events together. I like to support their work. Thursday evening the divisional staff went out for dinner and the theater, "A Christmas Carol." We had a nice evening together and the women loved the theater so much, we are going again next week! To see 'Wicked' - can't wait! It's part of my Christmas present to me. I also got some of Aivis's photos framed - my other Christmas gift to myself!

After that busy week, I flew to Chicago for a day to meet my brother, Steve. He's in town for a week and I only had a day to be with him. We went shopping and ate with friends. It was a nice day. I flew back on Saturday morning and went straight to a movie theater, where canned goods were being collected for the Army. The theater management does this at all of their locations and it's huge - about 1/4 million cans. The theater I was at collected over 12,000. It was a great deal - 5 cans=free movie, 10 more=movie pass for later. Again, the volunteers were so great - we are fortunate to have such good community support. And then, Sunday I was at the Quincy corps. The morning worship was a blessing and especially because I was with some good friends. Even though I was preaching for the 1st Sunday of Advent, I managed to get some Latvia stories in and they seemed to appreciate that. I can't help talking about Latvia! After lunch, I helped them out with their Christmas visits to the Veterans Hospital. I haven't done that for a few years. It was fun to be with the corps people and as always, I was blessed as I talked with the patients. So, you can imagine I'm a little tired today. The only event was our DHQ Christmas party, which was a lot of fun. The rest of the week I'm in the office and very glad for that. Hope you are finding opportunities to celebrate this season and especially to see God at work, even in your busyness.